Temperature-dependent Sellmeier equations for rare-earth sesquioxides

High-power lasers are making increasing demands on laser hosts especially in the area of thermal management. Traditional hosts, such as YAG, are unsuitable for many high-power applications and therefore, new hosts are being developed including rare-earth sesquioxides. We report new measurements of the refractive indices of these materials as functions of wavelength and temperature, which will aid in the design of laser cavities and other nonlinear optical elements. (C) 2013 Optical Society of America